Many business travelers take trips which last only one or two nights. A familiar sight is the salesman, traveling down the road with a hanging suit bag visible through the window of the car. Typically such individuals take one suit, a clean shirt, underwear and toiletries for an overnight trip.
The typical garment bag weighs in the range of 7 to 10 lbs, whereas, on a business trip, the traveler may be carrying between 4 and 6 lbs. of clothing. Accordingly, to ensure that these short-trip travelers do not carry more luggage than personal belongings, an ongoing challenge is to reduce weight while maximizing all available space. At the same time, however, in the typical garment bag a large percentage of the available space has already been accounted for, with over-the-shoulder corner pockets, mesh organizer panels, and multiple exterior pockets to compartmentalize the load. A point of diminishing returns may be encountered with such multi-compartmentalization as well, in that with an excess of pockets, particularly opaque pockets, the traveller may forget what has been put where.